MasterCard has been showing off a next-generation credit card called the Display Card. The name Display Card comes from the fact that it has a small LCD in the upper right-hand corner. In the lower left-hand corner is a small numerical keypad.

The credit card is designed for increased security and combines the functionality of a secure dongle that generates one-time passwords with a credit card, allowing users to carry one device rather than two.

The idea with the Display Card is that the little LCD will display the one-time password needed to complete certain online banking transactions. In the future, the card's capabilities can be expanded, and the small display can be used to show other things such as accumulated reward points, last transaction amounts, and even the credit card balance. The card is expected to be available from participating banking institutions in January.

"We brainstormed on ways to make it convenient and yet secure for customers," said V Subba from Standard Chartered Bank, which is collaborating with MasterCard.

"The question was: instead of sending customers another bulky token, could we replace something which already exists in the customer's wallet? That was when credit, debit and ATM cards immediately came to mind."

The first customers likely to get the new Display Card are expected to be account holders at the Standard Chartered Bank locations in Singapore. There's no indication of when these cards might come to the U.S. or other countries.

This is mind blowing, if you didn't embed a keyboard and display into the card itself... well you'd probably have to make sure that all the machines swiping cards provided the ability to let you enter a PIN and get a response and that would be nigh on impossible.

This would be only for the ones with the keypad and display on the cards. I was thinking the same thing, that instead of the card just giving you a one time password for online purchases, make it also need a PIN to enable it to be used in a physical swipe. Now if you had to activate it and swiped it on something that had a skimmer installed they would still end up with your card number, but they would need to make a physical copy to use it because they would not be able to get access to the one time codes for online use.